


the mother we share

by rowenabane



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, End of the World, M/M, spoiler alert: the world EXPLODES
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 03:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowenabane/pseuds/rowenabane
Summary: The best scientists predict that in 5 billion years the sun will explode, expanding until it engulfs everything surrounding it. A dazzling, brilliant end that will scorch the earth and destroy all life.They were wrong.(Or, Doyoung and Jaehyun are running out of time)





	the mother we share

The first day the sky was pink like cotton candy, even at midday, and the news stations all said it was strange, ever so strange, that it looked like this. The birds wove their way through the sugar floss of the sky and Doyoung wondered if the lack of sunlight would harm his houseplants.

“Do you think it’ll stay like this?” he asked his neighbor, Jaehyun, who shrugged.

“Who knows?”

…

The second day people began to speculate. Meteorological phenomenon, they called it. Dust, in the air. Hadn’t this happened once? In a desert, perhaps, or some far off forest. The sky darkened into magenta, and the nights were blacker than black. The moon shined weakly through wisps of black.

Doyoung looked through his telescope at the night sky, peering until his eyes hurt.

“Don't bother,” Jaehyun had said. “You won’t see anything.”

And Doyoung frowned in confusion, until he realized that the reason he could see no stars was because there were none.

…

A state of global emergency. Officials talked, but what could they say? Shoot at the sky until it became blue again? It was too late, too late for talk and posture.

Doyoung watered his plants. He watched TV, then realized he didn’t want to. He walked outside. Stared at the burning sun.

Jaehyun stared at him. “What are you doing?”

Doyoung shrugged. “Who knows?”

…

It became obvious that there was no going back. Not when the scientists said that they could find no explanation for the sky, burning as if was being torn apart. The sun was an angry red, like blood, like a rotten fairytale apple.

Doyoung could not tear his eyes away from the sky.

People in the other houses wailed with despair, some packed up and left. To go where, Doyoung did not know.

Jaehyun knocked on his door at 1:00 pm on a Wednesday. It was odd, yes, but a lot of things were odd nowadays. He opened the door, raising an eyebrow at his neighbor.

“Can I come in?” He was wringing his hands together, wearing his skin thin with worry. About what, Doyoung did not know.

“Of course.”

…

The truth is ugly. It is ugly and unwieldy and unwanted. Sometimes it is a sky devoid of stars, sometimes it is a sun that bleeds. Sometimes it is a pink sky and a dead houseplant and a neighbor with a secret.

“The world is going to end.” Jaehyun said, his voice strained.

“How do you know?” Doyoung asked, ever a forced optimist. “How can you know?”

“Please, Doyoung,” Jaehyun pleaded.

“What’s wrong?” Curious. Cautious.

“I love you.”

…

Confessions were unwanted. Vessels of the truth that had no place in Doyoung’s home.

“You need to leave.” He said, voice hard.

“Please, Doyoung, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Doyoung choked back all the words he wanted to shout because it was too late, too late, and Jaehyun’s confession meant the end of the world and the end of this tense, neighborly friendship they had built between them. Doyoung had never once let himself imagine, had never once let himself dwell on fantasies that would not come true.

How long had they been neighbors? Years and years. Once they had been something more. Then they had been nothing at all. And only once had Doyoung  _ ever  _ entertained the thought of telling Jaehyun the truth.

Jaehyun was pleading, his voice strained. “The world is ending.”

“And so is this conversation.”

They stared at each other for the longest moment, Jaehyun’s eyes red and Doyoung’s lips white, the silence an unfathomable black between them. The sky burned like all the fires in Doyoung’s heart that he fought to put out.

Maybe he had loved him, once. Thought he loved him.

“I love you, Doyoung,” Jaehyun said quietly, words devoured by the quiet.

“Since when,” Doyoung said, the words more cynicism than question.

The conversation was an eerie reflection of one Doyoung was sure he had had before, one he had blocked out of his memories. But this time their positions were reversed, and Doyoung was staring down a long tunnel of options he had thrown out the window.

“Since a very long time,” Jaehyun replied.

Not long enough. Never long enough.

“What would you have me do, Jaehyun? Admit the same to you so you can ease the guilt in your mind? One last loose end to tie up before the sky burns itself apart?”

The words stung, and Doyoung knew it. He had long since burned the bridges of his heart, and every word was like a type of self defense, protecting him from further hurt.

…

Jaehyun was an ex, of sorts. But what they had been wasn’t deep enough to quantify as love, as relationship. Jaehyun was an ex-friend, ex-lover, ex-life. Doyoung had forgotten. He had burned the string holding them together and rewoven it into a blanket that would keep him warm when his heart was cold.

Doyoung could feel his hand shaking as he drew the curtains closed on the orange sunset. He did not want, did not want. That was his only flaw. Not wanting. Not needing.

15 missed calls from an unknown number, but Doyoung recognized it all the same. It seemed that Jaehyun had never deleted his number.

Doyoung turned off his phone and waited for the world to end.

…

All his house plants were dead, but the world had not ended yet. How much longer did he have? How much longer did any of them have?

The numbness had set in, and the fervor of destruction had made burned out shells of people desperate to cling to life. Birthday parties were held for those not yet born. Balloons floated down the street and drifted into the sky to burn in the atmosphere. Doyoung lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the glaring light, eyes tracing the thin clouds. 

How much longer did he have? Like a houseplant, he too could not live without the sun.

“Who knows,” he murmured to himself.

…

“This means nothing,” Doyoung said on Jaehyun’s doorstep. “Don’t let this mean anything.”

Jaehyun’s mouth moved wordlessly and Doyoung kissed him once, eyes closed.

And oh, how the sun burned behind them, the sky streaked as if with paint.

And oh, how Doyoung cried.

…

There was never enough time. Never enough time for Doyoung, who had believed he had so much only to have it stolen from him.

Loving Jaehyun was familiar but Doyoung promised himself that it meant nothing, that he was dispassionate and that he did not matter if the world ended because none of it mattered. He was a distant beach on some lone shore, untouched by the waves of fate.

Three days had passed. How many were left?

…

“I remember how you always used to like ice cream.”

“Maybe I’ve changed.”

“I know you haven’t.”

And so they went on what wasn’t a date but something else, a kind of goodbye to the ice cream parlor at the corner of the main street. It was like traveling in time, back to a blue sky and butterflies in his stomach. It was like beginning again.

They walked home and Doyoung stood on his doorstep, looking down at Jaehyun.

“You can come inside,” he started hesitantly, “if you want.”

It was more than a simple invitation and they both knew it. Jaehyun’s foot crossed the threshold and as Doyoung pulled him closer he pushed the doubts out of his mind.

_ This means nothing, _  he thought.  _ Don’t let this mean anything. _

…

Time, Doyoung reasoned, is like ice cream. It melts too fast for it to be enjoyed, especially when the sun in bright and hot and burning right outside the window.

“The sun is expanding,” Jaehyun said, Doyoung curled against his side. “It will keep expanding until it engulfs the planet.”

Doyoung closed his eyes. The windows were all open because of the heat, because the sun seemed to grow in the sky each day.

“What if it doesn’t destroy the earth?” Doyoung asked, an impossible outcome to a certain doom.

Jaehyun shrugged but his eyes were distant, a million miles away, lost in space.

Doyoung pressed a kiss to his cheek, and he could’ve sworn Jaehyun’s skin was on fire.

…

The clocks had all stopped. Maybe it was strange that Doyoung had been so desperate to gain back time, time he had given up, time he had lost, only to have it freeze before him.

“No constellations,” he whispered to Jaehyun one night, breath fanning across his cheek. “No stars.”

“The sun is too bright to see them,” Jaehyun murmured back.

And even at night the sky was tinged red, the moon a bone-white speck in the bloody sky.

…

Doyoung could feel a shift in things. A quiet that hung over the streets.

A woman was wailing in the streets, her dress torn, face pale. She screamed at the sky, eyes closed. Doyoung could remember every detail about her in cruel clarity - the torn hem of her dress, the way her knuckles were red and bruised. The veins crossing her face like spiderwebs. The ends of her hair, lank against her back.

Doyoung ignored her, pulling the curtains shut with a snap.

“What’s wrong?” Jaehyun asked.

“Nothing,” Doyoung said. “Nothing at all.”

…

On the seventh day Doyoung saw it, like a rainbow across the sky, like a ring of fire, a halo to the earth. There was a dull roar in his ears and he wondered if it was his heartbeat. He wondered if it was the earth, locked in a deadly duet with the star that had brought it so much life, only to end it all. The sun was so close Doyoung imagined he could touch it and it burned his vision, burned his skin.

“Don’t look at it,” Jaehyun said softly, drawing him back from the window.

“What happens now?” Doyoung said, and he could feel an unbearable warmth in his bones. Was he crying? He must have been, because Jaehyun wiped at his face and his fingertips came away wet.

And that dull roar continued and the world became a heatwave and Jaehyun pulled Doyoung into his arms one last time. Kissed him quietly in the dying glare.

“Who knows?” He whispered. He turned Doyoung’s face from the window but stared with an unerring gaze, his voice heavy. Doyoung closed his eyes and wove his fingers in the hem of Jaehyun’s shirt.

A rush of heat, then nothingness.

Doyoung did not see the sky fall apart. Did not feel it. Did not feel anything.

Like a flower, the sky bloomed, and the world became a sun to rival any other.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> a) thanks for reading! i wrote this mess in science class instead of doing my work ajksakjs  
> b) the title comes from the song the mother we share by chvrches. give it a listen! it really inspired me to write this!  
> c) hmu on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nastaeyong) <3


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